Tips for Wearing Knitted Cardigans

December 5th, 2008 by Katy

Want to vamp up your knitted cardigans? It’s pretty much the depths of winter now in the northern hemisphere, and perhaps you’re wondering how you can spruce up those knitted cardigans that are in your closet – or maybe you’ve bought a few and you want to improve on them. Here are a few great tips.

Change the buttons

I’m a collector of buttons and have a tin of them that I love to look through. If you keep the buttons of any clothes you throw away you can gather a fine collection. Also one of my local charity (thrift) stores has a button box that I loved to sift through when I was just starting my collection.

The buttons need to fit easily through the button-holes but not slip through too easily or they’ll come undone. If you’ve got a lot of spare buttons then you can sift through your collection and put on one side all the buttons that might look good. Look for glamorous ones, for example. Then hold each of them to your cardigan to see how it looks. When you’ve filtered the possibilities down to just a few then try the cardigan on and hold the buttons in front of the cardi to see which one will be best.

If you haven’t got any spare buttons then let your imagination fly. Think about gorgeous bright colours – what colour buttons do you think would give your cardi the right lift that you’re looking for, or that would look daring (if daring is what you’re aiming for!)? Or you might like to think of different styles of buttons. Especially look out for glamorous ones. If you visit a store where there’s a good selection then you’re bound to see some that get you going.

You’ll be amazed at how this can transform a knitted cardigan!

Add ribbons – first style

The first tip for using ribbons is for a cardigan that doesn’t easily meet in the middle, or a bolero or shrug that you want to revamp – this is a great one for giving it a new look.

You want two bits of ribbon of the same length, and you attach them to the front edges of the cardigan where the gap is at its narrowest. Make sure that your ribbons are long enough to tie an attractive bow. That looks so-o-o lovely!

Add ribbons – second style

Another way to add ribbons is for a cardi that you can overlap a bit in front. For this you want much longer ribbons, long enough to wrap right around your waist and more, depending on which tying style you want to use: you can tie them at the back, or if you have much longer ribbons then you can if you want wrap them right around you and to the front again, and tie them at the front.

This time you attach them at or near the bottom corners of the cardi. It’s probably best to pin them on with safety pins first, so that you can try them out and see whether you want to attach them higher or lower.

Normally the ribbon attached on the right-hand side will go over the left side of your cardigan and the one on the left will go under the right side of the cardigan.

You’ll find that when you wrap them around you, the back of the cardigan will lift up in order for the two ribbons to meet. That doesn’t matter – it’s all part of the look, which is just lovely.

I hope you enjoy trying out one or all of these ideas. If you enjoyed reading these tips please do bookmark them using the “BOOKMARK” button below.

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